President of the National Civic Art Society, a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. that promotes the classical and humanistic tradition in public art and architecture. Eleventh Chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency comprising seven presidential appointees who are the aesthetic guardians of Washington.
The Fitzroy condo building. Designed by Roman and Williams.
The National Civic Art Society is delighted to announce that on March 10 in New York City, the developers of the new Fitzroy condo building in Chelsea are hosting a party at which the Society will be honored. Roman and Williams – the designers of the Deco-inspired terracotta building, which will be located next to the High Line – chose to make NCAS the recipient of that honor. (You can find a Curbed story on the building, whose slogan is “Bring beauty back,” here.)
Roman and Williams released the following statement:
In celebration of the new Fitzroy Residences, JDS Development Group and Largo Investments have organized an event to honor the design firm Roman and Williams. In the same spirit of civic pride that motivated the creation of the building, the firm suggested a gift to the National Civic Art Society to mark the occasion.
For Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer – the principals of Roman and Williams – the National Civic Art Society represents an organized entity that has chosen to stand up against the status quo approach to design in the public realm, fighting the battle to liberate us from the restricting myth that the modernist style is the only acceptable “architectural language of our time,” when many people – including Roman and Williams – express their values and now-ness using a traditional, vernacular and adaptive visual language.
According to NCAS president Justin Shubow, “The National Civic Art Society is proud to be recognized by the distinguished firm of Roman and Williams. Their widely acclaimed work demonstrates that traditional, beautiful architecture is alive and well – and highly desirable. They are rebels in defense of tradition who reconcile past and present in exciting and innovative ways.”
On April 23, 2016, I’m going to be delivering the keynote address at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art-New England’s 2016 Bulfinch Awards. David Brussat announced the winners, which include Robert A.M. Stern Architects, at his blog.
For more information on the Keynote Lecture, please contact David Andreozzi at (401) 245-6800. For more information on the Reception, Dinner and Awards Ceremony Gala, please contact Sally Wilson at (978) 578-7129.
Gold Level:
Atlantic View Landscape Lighting, Paragon Landscape Design, Perfection Fence
AW Hastings & Co. | Tischler Windows
Silver Level: Boston Design Guide | Builder+Architect | F.H. Perry Builder New England Home | New Old House | Northshore Home
Pella | Clem Labine’s Period Homes | Clem Labine’s Traditional Building
By Matthew Disler – July 19, 2015 RealClearPolitics
Tourists milled around the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial last Friday, snapping photos in front of the 30-foot tall granite statue of the civil rights leader standing, arms folded, facing the Tidal Basin and the Washington Monument. Rapturous visitors wandered along the wall encircling the figure of King emerging from a mountainous slab of rock, engraved with a passage from his “I Have a Dream” speech: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”
Justin Shubow was having none of it.
“I think it’s an embarrassment for numerous reasons,” he stated bluntly, ticking off a litany of criticisms of the monument’s design: it was sculpted by a Chinese artist who didn’t speak English or know much about King; it ignores his religious background; it makes him look too angry. Shubow termed the quotations “second-rate” (“It’s as if you go to the Lincoln Memorial and don’t get the Gettysburg Address”) and noted that King is not wearing his wedding band.
This fierce critic is the president of the National Civic Art Society, an organization with some 100 members that has been at the forefront of the opposition to Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial. The non-profit’s mission states that it is focused on educating the public about the classical tradition in Washington’s memorials and buildings and helping policymakers and planners continue this practice. Shubow and his organization decry the recent series of modernist memorials, which they think is highlighted garishly in famed architect Frank Gehry’s design for the Eisenhower Memorial.
It’s not the only one Justin Shubow disdains. The World War II Memorial? Shubow finds it “reminiscent of the architecture of fascist Italy,” with “Germanic wreaths,” “creepy eagles,” and a pointless fountain.
“It could easily be a Wehrmacht memorial,” he said.
Franklin Roosevelt’s Memorial? “I think it’s defeatist,” Shubow said, later adding, “The focal point [of the central statue] is his little dog. Everyone squats down and takes cutesy photos with it. It’s a piece of kitsch.”
The proposed Eisenhower Memorial, however, currently bears the brunt of his ire. Shubow and his group have become go-to sources for criticisms about the memorial in papers like The Washington Post, New York Times, and The Daily Beast, largely through their sheer doggedness. In 2011, the organization ran a shoestring-budget competition for an alternate to the Gehry design, “to suggest what a classical or traditional alternative might look like,” in Shubow’s words. He started submitting Freedom of Information Act requests about the Eisenhower Memorial Commission’s design competition, run by the General Services Administration, and in 2012 he penned a 154-page report disparaging the Gehry plan, from the design competition process (which critics like the group Right by Ike denounce as closed and unfair) to the ballooning costs for the project. In 2013, he testified against it in a House Committee on Natural Resources subcommittee hearing.
“I think we have been focused and unrelenting, and I think we’ve had an excellent champion with Justin Shubow, who really has been a very capable leader in this endeavor and has been tenacious in his fight,” said Milton Grenfell, a director of NCAS and a Washington, D.C.-based architect. “We’ve sort of moved into de facto leaders.”
The NCAS derides the Gehry memorial as ungainly and ill-befitting the man who led the Allied Forces to victory in Europe in World War II and became the 34th president. The design’s most recent iteration features a 447-foot long, eight-story metal tapestry depicting a landscape in Eisenhower’s hometown of Abilene, Kan., as well as two free-standing columns and a “core” of statues depicting Eisenhower as general, president, and a young man gazing out at his future achievements.
The memorial has changed substantially since it was introduced and given preliminary approval by the Commission of Fine Arts in 2011 (it needs approval from both the CFA and the National Capital Planning Commission before construction starts). Initially, metal tapestries surrounded the memorial’s inner core on three sides; the statues of Eisenhower as general and president were bas-reliefs; and the statue of Eisenhower in the center of the memorial depicted him as a “barefoot boy,” in reference to a speech he gave soon after World War II.
Soon after the design was unveiled, Eisenhower family members began voicing their disapproval. That December, a Washington Poststory quoted Susan and Anne Eisenhower, two of Ike’s granddaughters, speaking against Gehry’s proposal. After the piece ran, David Eisenhower—the only member of the family who sat on the Eisenhower Memorial Commission—resigned, explaining that he was concerned about a potential conflict of interest between his position and his new role as chairman of the Eisenhower Foundation (which runs the president’s library and museum).
In June of this year, the House Committee on Appropriations stripped all funding for the commission for the next fiscal year in its Interior-EPA appropriations bill and called for a “reset” on the memorial process, while the Senate committee allotted $1 million. In contrast, the NCPC had said that more than $70 million would be needed this year for construction to start.
“We’re hoping that in the budget compromise, the Senate will side with the House and call for a total reset of the design with an open, democratic competition,” said Shubow. “And that’s going to include a classical design, one that comports with the best of our memorial tradition.”
On July 9, the NCPC approved the final design for the memorial, with only one member dissenting. Former Sen. Bob Dole was one of the leading voices in support of the memorial, calling on the commissioners in a written statement to approve the design quickly in the name of World War II veterans—“a million aging American heroes who revere Ike and want to honor him before we are all gone.”
In his remarks at that meeting, Shubow attacked the nighttime lighting plan, arguing that the steel tapestry “will look like a glowing billboard or movie screen. It’s distracting brightness will undeniably ruin the vista to the Capitol.”
Broadly, the NCAS’s principal grievance is aesthetic, although both Grenfell and Shubow admitted that their complaints go deeper. To them, Gehry’s memorial is too modernist, and in its attempts to be something new and never-before-seen it misses the point about what a monument is supposed to do.
A good monument, Grenfell explained, should be easy to understand and beautiful.
“In terms of beauty—frankly, most modern artists don’t even think of the word,” he continued. “They think of the word ‘challenging’ and ‘cutting edge’ or something, but not ‘beauty.’ I think we need to reconnect with the great tradition of monument and architecture to go forward—not to reject it wholeheartedly, but to continue with it and evolve with it the way civilizations have always addressed monuments and art.”
Shubow concurs. “For what the public knows, it’s mainly aesthetic,” he says. “But for people who understand more, it’s about the spending, and also there’s the competition.”
So how about the Jefferson Memorial, he is asked. Does that pass muster? Shubow doesn’t hesitate: “I think it’s magnificent.”
Salt Lake City Federal Courthouse — Architect: Thomas Phifer and Partners, 2014
On April 28 in New York City I’ll be speaking on “The Architecture of Democracy: How the Federal Government Chooses Architects.” My talk is being sponsored by the National Civic Art Society and First Things magazine, and will take place at the latter’s editorial offices. It’s free and open to the public.
My talk will be on the same subject I previously described here.
Date: Tuesday, April 28
Time: 6 PM reception; 6:30 PM lecture
Cost: Free
Location: First Things Editorial Offices, 35 E. 21st St., Sixth Floor, New York, NY 10010
San Francisco Federal Building — Architect: Thom Mayne of Morphosis, 2007
On December 17 at the National Arts Club in New York, I’m going to be speaking about federal architecture. Here’s the description from the club’s bulletin:
Justin Shubow: The Architecture of Democracy
Wednesday, December 17, 8:00 PM
The General Services Administration–which oversees the design of all federal buildings and courthouses, including the attendant artwork–is the largest patron of art and architecture in the United States. Its works are the physical embodiment of the federal government, and thus have great symbolic significance and evince America.
In 1994, GSA created the Design Excellence Program to overcome what it perceived to have been the mediocre, uninspiring buildings the government had constructed over the prior decades. The program subscribes to the Guiding Principles of Federal Architecture, which then-presidential aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan created in 1962: “It should be our object to meet the test of Pericles’ evocation to the Athenians: ‘We do not imitate–for we are a model to others.’” The program seeks out “innovation” and “creativity,” and has been successful in hiring some of the world’s most esteemed and cutting-edge architects.
This evening, Justin Shubow will discuss the history and evolution of the GSA’s architectural principles and the agency’s contributions to the American landscape. Mr. Shubow is President of the National Civic Art Society, an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting the classical and humanistic tradition in public art and architecture. Join us as we explore America’s civic architecture.
Tuscaloosa Federal Courthouse — Thomas Beeby of HBRA Architects, 2012
On July 18, 2014, I spoke at the National Civic Art Society’s U.S. House Briefing on the Eisenhower Memorial. Also speaking were Bruce Cole — former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and President Obama’s appointee to the Eisenhower Memorial Commission — and art and architecture critic Catesby Leigh.
On September 16, I’m going to be the keynote speaker at Common Dialogue Day at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan. It’s a day the school sets aside each fall to discuss a major theme. The theme this year is “Getting Perspective,” which I will discuss both philosophically and architecturally. After the lecture, students, faculty, and members of the local community will head to breakout sessions to continue the conversation. It’s an honor to have been invited to speak.
Capitol Hill Luncheon and
Briefing on the Eisenhower Memorial
July 18, 2014, at Noon
Rayburn House Office Building, room 2247
The National Civic Art Society cordially invites you to a lunch briefing on the planned National Eisenhower Memorial. The briefing will cover the status of the imperiled design by Frank Gehry and the alternatives before Congress. A box lunch will be provided.
Speakers will include:
The Hon. Bruce Cole, the former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, and President Obama’s appointee to the Eisenhower Memorial Commission
Justin Shubow, President of the National Civic Art Society
Background: After 15 years and $40 million spent, the wildly unpopular design for the Eisenhower Memorial is on life support. Not a shovel of dirt has been turned, Congress zeroed all construction funding, and the National Capital Planning Commission denied preliminary approval. Most recently, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and Environment voted to eliminate the proposal altogether.
Designed by the fashionable “starchitect” Frank Gehry, the plan been criticized from all sides — including the Eisenhower family (see John Eisenhower’s letter here) as well as by numerous members of Congress, pundits, and art critics of all political and artistic orientations (see compilation here). Opponents of the design believe that a more traditional design selected by an open, democratic competition would cost far less and be completed faster.
Projected Cost: $142 million — and threatens to rise.
Those Invited to Attend: Members of the House and Senate and upper-level staff with responsibilities in the arts, public lands, GSA, the Park Service, and related agencies. (No interns please.) Also welcome are: Members and staff of the National Capital Planning Commission, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, concerned citizens, and the media.
R.S.V.P.: If you have not already done so, please reserve your place at Eventbrite as soon as possible. Space is limited. Closest Metro is Capitol South. Call or email Fran Griffin at 703-255-2211 with any questions.
On Saturday, September 28, 2013, I’ll be giving a talk at the biennial conference of the Michael Oakeshott Association. (Full conference program here.) The theme of the conference, which is being held at Colorado College, is Modernity and Its Discontents. Here’s the abstract of my presentation, which alludes to Oakeshott’s essay “The Tower of Babel”:
The Tower of Wreckage: The Triumph of Nihilism in Architecture
Outside of academia, architecture is the field in which deconstructionism has achieved the greatest success: buildings that vandalize our cities and monuments that subvert the very ideals they are supposed to represent. The effect is to disorient, threaten, and demoralize the public, which has no choice but to be exposed to such structures. Deconstructionist architects are praised by global elites, win the profession’s highest awards, and obtain many of the most important commissions, including those where the client is the state. If architecture is the embodiment of a civilization, what does such actually existing nihilism portend for the future? What is to be done?
On March 19 2013, in front of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, I testified along with Rep. Darrell Issa on a bill to scrap Gehry’s design for the National Eisenhower Memorial. The New York Times and Financial Times quoted my testimony, which I turned into the essay below.
You can find a video of the hearing here. I begin at the 54:30 mark. At 1:09:00, Rep. Tom McClintock quotes my written testimony on the essential nature of monuments and comments, after which he comments:
That is the most beautiful description of what we ought to be focused on that I’ve seen. In whatever future legislation we adopt, this ought to be the preamble of it. I want to commend you on the most clear-headed statement I’ve seen on the subject.
After the hearing, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) attempted but failed to rebut my criticism of that organization’s defense of the Memorial’s closed, undemocratic competition.
* * *
Why Congress Should Support a New Eisenhower Memorial
By Justin Shubow
May 8, 2013
The proposed design for the Eisenhower Memorial should be rejected for one that accords with our capital’s classical tradition of architecture and with the nature of monuments themselves—to make a simple, clear statement easily accessible to the public.
* * *
As an educational nonprofit dedicated to the classical and humanistic tradition in public art and architecture, the National Civic Art Society (which I direct) believes that our most important monuments play an essential role in defining our national identity and crystallizing our historical memory. Civic art and architecture are the mirror in which the civilization sees itself.
In 1999 Congress authorized the creation of a national Memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and created the Eisenhower Memorial Commission to plan and build it. In 2009, after a closed “competition” that some believe was rigged, the commission selected Frank Gehry, arguably the world’s most famous and fashionable architect, to design the Memorial. His grandiose, deconstructionist proposal—now estimated to cost a staggering $142 million—would fill a four-acre square just south of the Air and Space Museum. His plan is so big it would fit two Lincoln Memorials.
One year ago it was conventional wisdom that the design was a done deal, a faitaccompli soon to be cemented with quite real facts on the ground. But what has been groundbreaking is the surge of attention from Congress and the public, and the ensuing barrage of opposition. Even an article in the New Yorker, that indicator of sophisticated opinion, last month called for “rebooting” the Memorial and explained, “in true bipartisan spirit, almost everyone hates it.”
How did we get to this turning point? The bipartisan Eisenhower Commission—comprising four senators, four House members, and four presidential appointees—does not contain a single connoisseur of art and architecture. (By contrast, the commission overseeing the Jefferson Memorial included architect Fiske Kimball, a renowned scholar of American and Jeffersonian architecture.) This lack of expertise left the Eisenhower Commission vulnerable to the influence of architectural high priests and mandarins who have an agenda antithetical to the taste and values of the American people.
The commission made a fateful error by choosing to use the General Service Administration’s Design Excellence Program for the competition. That program was created to select architects for federal office buildings and courthouses, not memorials. The very creator of Design Excellence, former GSA chief architect Edward Feiner, strongly urged the commission not to use the program.
The decision to use Design Excellence represents an utter reversal of our tradition of competitions for national monuments and memorials. Whereas formerly we held competitions of designs, the commission ran a competition of designers. At no point in the competition was an entrant required to submit an actual proposal for the memorial. Instead the emphasis was on the entrants’ previous works and reputations—all factors that favor the architectural elite.
But one does not need to be an established architect to come up with a brilliant design for a memorial. One can be a student, a sculptor, an amateur. The winner of the 1902 open competition for the (superb but overlooked) Ulysses S. Grant Memorial was Henry M. Shrady, a self-taught unknown who went on to become one of the leading sculptors of his time. Likewise, when Maya Lin won the open, blindly reviewed competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, she was a mere college student. A present-day Shrady or Lin could not even have entered the Eisenhower competition.
Not only was the competition limited to architects with substantial portfolios, it was a closed competition that garnered a mere 44 entries. This is hundreds fewer than the numbers of entries in open competitions for previous national memorials. The process was also secretive. To this day we do not know the identities of all the entrants; we have never seen what Gehry submitted; and we do not know who sat on the evaluation boards. However, so far we have been able to determine that the process violated GSA’s own acquisition rules. For instance, the evaluation board was stacked to give the client more weight than usual, which would have helped the commission achieve a pre-arranged outcome.
At the very first meeting of the commission, all the way back in 2001, its chairman Rocco C. Siciliano said it should choose someone like Frank Gehry. And lo and behold, eight years later Gehry won the “competition.” This is the same Gehry who has repeatedly said he does not like entering competitions since he does not like losing. Also note that Siciliano, who serves with Gehry as a trustee of the architect’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, had hired or worked with Gehry on three prior occasions. Informed of such red flags, Representative Darrell Issa, in his capacity as Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has been investigating the propriety of the competition.
The former chief architect of GSA is not the only distinguished opponent of the selection process. Another is Paul Spreiregen, who is perhaps the leading expert on design competitions and author of a book on the subject. Spreiregen served as an adviser for design competitions in Washington, D.C., including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the World Bank Headquarters. He wrote in the Washington Post:
Why weren’t all American designers given the opportunity to submit proposals for the Eisenhower memorial? The method for doing that is a very well-organized and well-managed open-design competition. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial, the 9/11 Memorial in New York City and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are ample evidence of the reliability of open-design competitions. The design process for the Eisenhower memorial should have been open to all. It still can be, if the Gehry design is rejected.
In the 1990s, when the commission overseeing the National World War II Memorial competition held a closed competition nearly identical to the one for the Eisenhower Memorial, there was widespread public outcry and the original competition was scrapped in favor of an open one. The Eisenhower competition has ended up in exactly the same situation. Failing to understand the past, the Eisenhower Commission was condemned to repeat it.
The result of the poorly run, undemocratic Eisenhower Memorial competition was the bizarre choice of Frank Gehry, an architect known for his subversive deconstructioniststyle, project-cost overruns, and priordesignflaws. Putting aside aesthetics, his poor performance record alone ought to have weighed against him, according to GSA’s own standards. In the 1990s, before the Design Excellence Program went into effect, Gehry said, “My name was put up for a courthouse, and the General Services Administration . . . just laughed at the idea.” On another occasion he said, “The American government won’t even hire me to do anything. In fact we submit for courthouses every once in a while, and we get funny letters back, and people on the selection committee, the GSA guys, just guffaw to think of someone like me doing the project.”
Gehry has well summarized his deconstructionist philosophy:
Life is chaotic, dangerous, and surprising. Buildings should reflect that.
***
I try to rid myself and the other members of the firm of the burden of the culture and look for new ways to approach the work. I want to be open-ended. There are no rules, no right or wrong. I’m confused as to what’s ugly and what’s pretty. [emphasis added]
To be clear, this relativist, if not nihilist, philosophy constitutes a positive feature in the Design Excellence Program, which is explicitly intended to favor “innovation” and “creativity”—buzzwords meaning avant-garde and radical architecture—and to disfavor tradition, the classical American style, and anything “too rooted in the past.”
As one might expect, the style, materials, content, and scale of Gehry’s proposal are totally antithetical to and discordant with the National Mall and the Monumental Core. Indeed, Gehry has repeatedly stated his rejection of harmony as a principle of architecture and urban planning. The largest element of the Memorial’s ugly design is a gargantuan “tapestry” of industrial steel cables. The screen is larger than the iconic Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. Viewed close up, the twisted steel resembles Medusa’s serpentine head. We fear that the tapestry would come to be called the “iron curtain.”
The main tapestry and two secondary ones nearby are supported by ten enormous pillars (so-called “columns”) 80 feet tall and 11 to 12 feet in diameter. They are bare cylinders without any capitals or decoration. Conjuring visions of an incomplete highway overpass or Soviet missile silos, the oppressive pillars would make visitors feel like ants.
As if this criticism were not enough, the durability of Gehry’s experimental structure—a cable wire mesh suspended in tension—has been called into question by the government’s own materials experts. The Department of the Army’s expert, for instance, recommended that an identical set of duplicate tapestries be built to serve as enormous spare parts when the tapestry becomes degraded or damaged. This would be so costly as to be unfeasible.
In short, the memorial design and process have been wrong in their aesthetics, wrong in their economics, and wrong in their physics. And perhaps Rep. Issa will find that the competition was wrong in its ethics.
Since Gehry and the Eisenhower Commission show zero willingness to back down, Congress has no choice but to go back to the drawing board and pass a bill to ensure that President Eisenhower gets the memorial he deserves. We must keep in mind that the client here is not GSA, not Gehry, not the commission. It is Congress, and ultimately the American people. Nothing could be more democratic than an open competition that provides opportunity for comment from both political leaders and the public. At the same time, it is essential that there be guidance from refined judges of taste and learned experts of the caliber of Fiske Kimball.
Regrettably, the legislation must make explicit what used to be assumed without question. Consider the bill that created the national memorial commemorating the passengers and crew killed on United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. Congress explicitly stated, “For the purposes of this Act, the terrorists . . . shall not be considered passengers or crew of that flight.” That Congress felt the need to insert this language shows that something has gone terribly awry among the artistic and architectural elite.
What then are the universal requirements of a monument? Monuments are civic art that cause us solemnly to reflect on who we are and what we value. They are heroic in scale, timeless, and possess dignity, even grandeur. They present an ideal to which we aspire rather than warts-and-all reality. Sacred and transcendent, they inspire instead of demoralizing us. They must honor, not merely remember, their subjects. They must be made of noble materials—such as marble and bronze—that have proven their durability over millennia, not industrial materials such as steel and concrete.
Monuments are permanent and must appear permanent, unlike a scrim or a shroud. Monuments ought to be clear and unequivocal in their meaning: They should evince a few simple ideas in a way accessible to ordinary Americans. They must be legible without a guide or key, and certainly without a visitor center or iPad.
Monuments speak to us even without signage. You can be inspired by a monument even if you do not know who is represented or what that person did. Monuments are not museums and they should not try to tell stories. They are not inkblots that leave things to the interpretation of the visitor. Monuments are statements, not question marks.
In addition to satisfying all of these requirements, the Eisenhower Memorial must continue our founders’ classical vision for the nation’s capital as embodied in the L’Enfant and McMillan Plans and the design of our core buildings of government, as well as the best of our tradition of presidential memorials. There is no better way to honor Eisenhower the general, the president, and the man than in the unmistakably American idiom that we love and cherish.
A traditional man of old-fashioned virtue, President Eisenhower disdained Modern art and architecture, which he did not believe represented the taste and values of the American people. He warned in 1962, “We see our very art forms so changed that we seem to have forgotten the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. . . . What has happened to our concept of beauty and decency and morality?”
America can and will build Eisenhower a monument that will prove his fears unfounded. The talent is there. Now is the time to find it.
